Windows 8 issue.

[Fossaw]

The disk in one of my machines died. I had an SSD to hand, and knowing Windows XP is not good with them, put Windows 8 on it. Went fine, set it in action and forgot about it, (it is a BOINC cruncher).

I needed to do an experiment and shut the thing down. When I restarted it, with all the original cards replaced, I hit a problem. I can see the mobo welcome screen, then the, now all blue, Windows logo and a series of white dots circling. This continues for a short while, then the screen blanks and remains so.

I have an OEM licence, so no help from MS. The disk supplier wants me to return the disk, so obviously, simply a supplier and useless for any help.

Any ideas to get the thing going again welcome.

[Neo1]

You could always boot the machine from a Linux live-disc, mount the SSD partition and check if it is broken. (i bet there is a 'chkdsk' equivalent for Linux that you can use)

Before returning the disk atleast try to format and reinstall the OS, might be a software fault.

[Mario F.]

I can see the mobo welcome screen, then the, now all blue, Windows logo and a series of white dots circling. This continues for a short while, then the screen blanks and remains so.

This is also the typical behavior when one has a GPU driver corruption. Start in safe mode and look at the listed drivers as they are being loaded. If it stops after listing a graphics card driver, that's the problem right there. To fix you just need to either install the generic VGA driver from the Windows installation disk (if the current driver is from your card manufacturer), or to run recovery mode if the current driver is the generic driver. After windows boots normally, you can then install the manufacturer drivers.